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Hezbollah Identifies Undercover CIA Officers In Lebanon In Dangerous Spy War

December 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

By Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The militant group Hezbollah has revealed the identities of CIA officers working undercover in Lebanon, a blow to agency operations in the region and the latest salvo in an escalating spy war. Hezbollah made the names public in a broadcast Friday night on a Lebanese television station, al-Manar. Using animated videos, the station recreated meetings purported to take place between CIA officers and paid informants at Starbucks and Pizza Hut.

The disclosure comes after Hezbollah managed to partially unravel the agency’s spy network in Lebanon after running a double agent against the CIA, former and current U.S. intelligence officials said. They requested anonymity to discuss matters of intelligence.In June, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah bragged that his group had identified at least two spies working for the CIA. It is not clear whether one of those spies was, in fact, the same double agent working for Hezbollah, which is considered a terrorist group by the U.S. Nasrallah has called the U.S. Embassy in Beirut a “den of spies.”The fiasco happened despite top CIA officials being warned to be extra careful when handling informants after Hezbollah and Lebanese officials arrested scores of Israeli spies in 2009.

The outing of the officers is particularly damaging because it will hinder the ability of these CIA employees to work overseas again — especially in the Internet age where references to their names will be widely available to other foreign intelligence agencies.

The CIA dismissed Hezbollah’s assertions.

“The agency does not, as a rule, address spurious claims from terrorist groups,” CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood said. “I think it’s worth remembering that Hezbollah is a dangerous organization, with al-Manar as its propaganda arm. That fact alone should cast some doubt on the credibility of the group’s claims.”

Former officials said one of the named officers was considered a rising star at the CIA and had been involved in many important operations in Iraq. Whether or not this employee would be able to continue a CIA career outside the U.S. is unknown. Former officials said it is likely Hezbollah has already shared photographs of the case officers with Iran, its closest ally.

It was not immediately clear whether the exposed CIA officers in Lebanon have been pulled out of the country. The Associated Press is not publishing the names of the officers because they could refer to operatives who remain undercover.

Revealing the identities of CIA officers has happened in the past. The last instance came about one year ago when the name of the CIA’s Pakistan station chief was leaked to reporters there. The CIA initially let him stay but eventually decided it was too dangerous for him to remain in the country.

Case officers met with informants at locations more than once, a practice frowned upon because it risks their exposure.

The disclosure indicates that Hezbollah is sending a sharp message to the CIA to stay out of Lebanon, suggesting that it could have captured the CIA officers at any time since it knew their identities. In 1984, Hezbollah kidnapped the CIA station chief in Beirut. He was tortured and later killed.

Al-Manar said the CIA team in Lebanon consisted of 10 officers and all used diplomat cover. The station said their jobs were to oversee intelligence networks in Lebanon.

 

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hezbollah-identifies-undercover-cia-officers-working-in-lebanon-in-dangerous-spy-war/2011/12/12/gIQAJ9aIqO_story.html

 

 

Filed Under: USA Tagged With: , ,

The CIA’s Most Secret Prison Revealed

December 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

In the historic city of Bucharest, the CIA tortured and interrogated high-risk terrorists for years in a basement prison, under the nose of roughly two million Romanians.

An investigation carried out by reporters for the Associated Press led to the news organization revealing on Thursday that in the years after the September 11 terror attacks, the Central Intelligence Agency operated an underground holding center for some of the most sought after alleged terrorists. There in a small six-cell jail, prisoners such as al-Qaeda operative Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were beaten and detained, all unbeknownst to the citizens of Romania or American authorities outside of the CIA.

This revelation from the AP comes after officials have adamantly denied any such institution in the past.

“No, no. Impossible, impossible,” Adrian Camarasan of the National Registry Office for Classified Information told Germany’s ARD television in an earlier interview. While Camarasan dismissed claims of a top-secret jail, former intelligence officials speaking under condition of anonymity now tell the AP that the prison did in fact exist, and did so right in the basement of the National Registry’s headquarters.

The National Registry Office for Classified Information, also known as ORNISS, has operated in the Bucharest building for years. In its annals are classified files pertaining to NATO and European Union intelligence. A known government installation, townspeople avoided the structure and thus the CIA had the perfect cover to open the prison. The first detainees came arrived in 2006, and despite being mere blocks from a major roadway and active train tracks, the top-secret cells beneath the first floor of the ORNISS building went perfectly undetected — until now.

In those cells, insiders tell the AP, prisoners were interrogated once installed in the compound. They were subjected to sleep deprivation, doused with water and slapped by intelligence officers. Detainees were kept in small cells erected atop springs, as to disorient the prisoners as well.

Though the prison was kept open until 2006, not all that lasted through it were freed in the end. Some were returned to their home countries. Others, like Mohammed, were sent to Guantanamo Bay. In September of that year, then-President George W Bush said that Mohammed had been under the custody of the CIA for questioning but never revealed where that exactly was. The next year the al-Qaeda operative would confess from Gitmo his role as a 9/11 mastermind and has been detained in the elusive military prison under guard of the American armed forces ever since.

In their investigation of the prison, AP reporters were able to link CIA-chartered jets from Bucharest into other locales, including Guantanamo and other sites of known prisons.

Only those speaking anonymously to the AP have revealed the true nature and location of the Bucharest prison. When asked for comment, the CIA officially declined.

“There have been years of official denials,” Dick Marty, a Swiss lawmaker who investigated claims of CIA secret prisons for the Council of Europe. “We are at last beginning to learn what really happened in Bucharest.”

 

Source: http://rt.com/usa/news/prison-revealed-cia-bucharest-371/

Filed Under: Prison, USA Tagged With: , ,

War On Drugs Revealed As A Total Hoax

December 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Afghanistan is, by far, the largest grower and exporter of opium in the world today, cultivating a 92 percent market share of the global opium trade.

But what may shock many is the fact that the US military has been specifically tasked with guarding Afghan poppy fields, from which opium is derived, in order to protect this multibillion dollar industry that enriches Wall Street, the CIA, MI6, and various other groups that profit big time from this illicit drug trade scheme.

Prior to the tragic events of September 11, 2001, Afghanistan was hardly even a world player in growing poppy, which is used to produce both illegal heroin and pharmaceutical-grade morphine. In fact, the Taliban had been actively destroying poppy fields as part of an effort to rid the country of this harmful plant, as was reported by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on February 16, 2001, in a piece entitled Nation’s opium production virtually wiped out.

But after 9/11, the US military-industrial complex quickly invaded Afghanistan and began facilitating the reinstatement of the country’s poppy industry. According to the United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP), opium cultivation increased by 657 percent in 2002 after the US military invaded the country under the direction of then-President George W. Bush.

CIA responsible for reinstating opium industry in Afghanistan after 9/11

More recently, The New York Times (NYT) reported that the brother of current Afghan President Hamid Karzai had actually been on the payroll of the CIA for at least eight years prior to this information going public in 2009. Ahmed Wali Karzai was a crucial player in reinstating the country’s opium drug trade, known as Golden Crescent, and the CIA had been financing the endeavor behind the scenes.

“The Golden Crescent drug trade, launched by the CIA in the early 1980s, continues to be protected by US intelligence, in liaison with NATO occupation forces and the British military,” wrote Prof. Michel Chossudovsky in a 2007 report, before it was revealed that Ahmed Wali Karzai was on the CIA payroll. “The proceeds of this lucrative multibillion dollar contraband are deposited in Western banks. Almost the totality of revenues accrue to corporate interests and criminal syndicates outside Afghanistan” (http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/A…).

But the mainstream media has been peddling a different story to the American public. FOX News, for instance, aired a propaganda piece back in 2010 claiming that military personnel are having to protect the Afghan poppy fields, rather than destroy them, in order to keep the locals happy and to avoid a potential “security risk” — and FOX News reporter Geraldo Rivera can be heard blatantly lying about poppy farmers being financially supported by the Taliban, rather than the CIA and other foreign interests.

So while tens of thousands of Americans continue to be harmed or killed every year by overdoses from drugs originating from this illicit opium trade, and while cultivation of innocuous crops like marijuana and hemp remains illegal in the US, the American military is actively guarding the very poppy fields in Afghanistan that fuel the global drug trade. Something is terribly wrong with this picture.

 

Source: http://flipthepyramid.com/index.php/entry/war-on-drugs-revealed-as-total-hoax

Filed Under: Afghanistan, Banks, Corporations, Corruption, Drugs, Economy, Imperialism, Marijuana, Military Industrial Complex, Money, Propaganda, USA Tagged With: ,

Cablegate One Year Later: How WikiLeaks Has Influenced Foreign Policy, Journalism, and the First Amendment

November 29, 2011 By 1 Comment

One year ago today, WikiLeaks started publishing a trove of over 250,000 leaked U.S. State Department cables, which have since formed the basis of reporting for newspapers around the globe. The publication has given the public a window into the inner workings of government at an unprecedented scale, and in the process, has transformed journalism in the digital age.

In recognition, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was just awarded Australia’s version of the Pulitzer Prize, in addition to the Martha Gellhorn journalism prize he won in the United Kingdom earlier this year. As Salon’s Glenn Greenwald observed, “WikiLeaks easily produced more newsworthy scoops over the last year than every other media outlet combined.” Yet at the same time, the Justice Department has been investigating WikiLeaks for criminal violations for doing what other media organizations have been doing in the U.S. for centuries—publishing truthful information in the public interest.

Here is a look at Cablegate’s impact on journalism surrounding six countries central to U.S. foreign policy, and why it is vital for the media to stand up for WikiLeaks’ First Amendment right to publish classified information.

The WikiLeaks Cables and Their Contributions to Journalism

Libya

This past summer, Senator John McCain was the most vocal member of Congress cheering for more aggressive military action to remove Libya’s then-leader Muammar Gaddafi. But a WikiLeaks cable revealed just two years earlier, Sen. McCain had personally promised to arm Qaddafi with U.S. military equipment. Yet Gaddafi was one of the strongest critics of the WikiLeaks publications. The cables exposed the greed and corruption of his regime, and, according to some reports, seemed to drive him crazy. He even accused the CIA of leaking the documents to undermine him.

Pakistan

Long before U.S forces secretly entered Pakistan to kill Osama bin laden in August, the cables confirmed the U.S. military was already covertly operating inside the country—a fact that the U.S. government had previously denied for months. Despite public support for the Pakistani government, the cables also showed U.S. diplomats have long thought of thePakistani intelligence service, the I.S.I., as a “terrorist organization” that tacitly supports al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Yemen

One of the first cables released in 2010 confirmed reports of another undeclared military action that the U.S. had previously denied—drones strikes in Yemen. At the same time, the cables detailed the secret deal the Yemeni President made with the U.S. to allow the strikes, which he lied to his people about in the process. When the C.I.A. extra-judicially killed alleged al-Qaeda leader and U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awaki with a drone in October 2011, the U.S. publicly announced the death but refused to officially release any information about the strike. A cable published by WikiLeaks provided a blueprint for how the attack was carried out.

Egypt

During the Egyptian revolution, the cables gave the rest of the world a stark and unflinching look at the brutality of Mubarak and his regime, facts of which Egyptians were already well aware. The cables painted a “vivid picture” of the U.S.’s close ties with the regime, but alsoconfirmed to the international community that police brutality in Egypt was “routine and pervasive” and that “the use of torture [was] so widespread that the Egyptian government ha[d] stopped denying it exists.”

Tunisia

The cables have been credited with directly influencing what came to be known as the Jasmine Revolution. In the early stages of mass political protests in Tunisia, Nawaat—the influential Tunisian blogging group—set up a website called Tunileaks and widely distributedthe cables to Tunisian citizens. The cables confirmed that the U.S. viewed Tunisian President Ben Ali as a corrupt and brutal tyrant and fanned the flames of the already smoldering revolution. Amnesty International would credit WikiLeaks and its media partners as “catalysts” in the people’s successful ouster of Ali.

Iraq

In what may turn out to be WikiLeaks’ most lasting legacy, CNN reported a month ago that a WikiLeaks cable played a role in expediting the return of all U.S. troops from Iraq and ending the decade long war. Negotiations to keep U.S. troops in Iraq longer than the original 2011 deadline were strained when Wikileaks released a cable showing the U.S. tried to cover up an incident where soldiers knowingly killed innocent women and children in Iraq. Iraqi negotiators indicated the cable gave them excuse to refuse to extend the troop presence.

This, of course, only scratches the surface, as the cables have shed light on almost every major foreign policy story of 2011. In April, Atlantic Wire reported that nearly half of 2011’sNew York Times issues relied on WikiLeaks documents. And while all of the cables have now been released, the impact is still reverberating. Zimbabwe’s notorious dictator Robert Mugabe may be next to feel the effects. The BBC recently reported that WikiLeaks revelations may force him to step down from power, a notion that was previously “unthinkable.”

Long Term Impact: WikiLeaks and Threats to the First Amendment

As we look back at how the WikiLeaks cables have enriched and colored our understanding of recent history, it’s impossible to ignore that the Justice Department is currently investigating individuals allegedly associated with WikiLeaks, reportedly for possible violations of the Espionage Act of 1917—an outdated relic of World War I—which has recently been used to punish government leakers.

No media organization has ever been indicted, much less convicted, under the Espionage Act. Constitutional scholars almost uniformly agree that a prosecution of a media organization would be devastating for press freedom and violate the First Amendment. The Justice Department has reportedly tried to avoid this constitutional problem by trying to craft charges against Wikileaks leader Julian Assange for soliciting or inducing classified information from his source under “conspiracy to commit espionage” theory.

Of course, asking sources for information is part of the normal news gathering process for any reporter, which is why Yale law professor Jack Balkin said the Justice Department’s strategy “threatens traditional journalists as well.” Secrecy expert Steven Aftergood argued that a prosecution under this theory could criminalize “ordinary conventions of national security reporting.” And former New York Times general counsel James Goodale remarked the Justice Department might as well be investigating WikiLeaks for “conspiracy to commit journalism.”

Yet the mainstream press, most notably the New York Times, has done little to defend WikiLeaks’ right to publish, despite the fact that legal observers on both the left and right have said it’s impossible to distinguish WikiLeaks and the Times under the letter of the law.

Assange’s rocky relationship with the Times and other media partners may be the reason for the Times’ silence. But, no matter what one thinks of Assange, failing to defend WikiLeaks’ right to publish government secrets is dangerously short sighted. With all the attention WikiLeaks has received, it’s easy to forget that newspapers have been publishing secret information for decades. In fact, in the past year, stories based on non-WikiLeaks classified information about Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Iran, China have graced the pages of the country’s most established publications. And much of the information on which those stories were based is of a higher classification level than anything WikiLeaks published.

The New York Times may feel safe in the Justice Department’s indication that they are not the target of any investigation, but the “trust us” argument will only last until the next big scoop. It was less than a decade ago that then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzalesrepeatedly claimed he would like to investigate the New York Times under the Espionage Act for its NSA warrantless wiretapping investigation. New York Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing gross constitutional violations that also happened to be classified “Top Secret.” But with a successful WikiLeaks prosecution, a threat like Gonzales’ could force a paper to kill such a story, or worse: the next Pulitzer Prize winner may be forced to accept his or her prize from a jail cell.

The mainstream American press has the most to lose from a WikiLeaks prosecution. Whether or not Julian Assange is indicted can’t extinguish the idea WikiLeaks represents. We now know the technology and expertise exists to create anonymously driven whistleblower platforms that can advocate for government transparency by publishing all over the world. As the Economist said, “Jailing Thomas Edison in 1890 would not have darkened the night.” And despite the established press’s unwillingness to defend WikiLeaks, they are also trying to copy WikiLeaks’ model.

As the media look back on the WikiLeaks cables’ wide-ranging impact on journalism this week, it’s important they also defend the idea behind WikiLeaks. Because if they do not stand up for WikiLeaks’ right to publish, in the end, it will only be harder to preserve the publication rights of mainstream organizations like the New York Times. The real casualty in a Wikileaks prosecution will not be Julian Assange; it will be the death of a free press and the First Amendment itself.

Source: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/28-2

Filed Under: USA, Whistleblowers Tagged With: , ,